1. Field of the Invention
The present application relates to the field of vehicles, in particular to a card reader for vehicles,
2. Prior Art
Vehicle data recorders (VDR) are apparatuses that record the vehicle travel data. The VDR can be fitted to various vehicles such as motor vehicles, water craft, or aircraft and can record and store the speed of travel, the time of travel, the route, and other status information in conjunction with the vehicle journey. Furthermore, data can be input and output via a connection such as a smart card.
To simplify the description, the following explanation will be based on the example of a VDR used in a motor vehicle. The motor vehicle VDR can completely and exactly record the relevant states of the motor vehicle while it is being driven, can completely record the motor vehicle route, and can regenerate this by special software on a computer. The device has practical importance in terms of a precaution against driving when tired, illegal excess motor vehicle speed, checking of negative behavior of the driver, analysis and investigations in the event of accidents, improving the level of compliance with traffic rules and the level of traffic monitoring, and ensuring safe operation of motor vehicles, etc. Motor vehicle VDRs have already been subject to significant improvements with regard to functions, volumes and characteristics, are resistant to the influences of moisture, water, corrosion and high temperatures, and can process various types of information and display motor vehicle operating states. It is likewise possible to carry out self-diagnoses and to effectively monitor a range of parameters such as the motor vehicle speed, the engine speed of revolution, the water temperature, the oil pressure, the amount of fuel, the oil consumption, and the electrical voltage of the battery, etc. Effective prevention and analysis of accident events are possible. In addition, the detailed recording of each individual start time, route, time of travel, maximum speed of the motor vehicle and time for which each motor vehicle maximum speed was maintained are recorded, thus allowing the monitoring authorities to effectively monitor the motor vehicle in a simple manner, based on the recorded data.
The smart card is often inserted and removed during use of the motor vehicle VDR. The motor vehicle can be started after insertion of the smart card. However, the smart card may fall out while the motor vehicle is traveling, because of vibration or for other reasons. The VDR can no longer record any more data after the smart card has fallen out. For this reason, the smart card should not fall out.
At present, an automatic card reader for motor vehicle VDRs is already available. This automatic card reader can be operated relatively easily, but has a quite complicated design with numerous different components and, because of this, the production costs are relatively high. A manual card reader is now proposed, because of the enormous costs of automatic card readers. The smart card is firmly clamped in this manual card reader by a plastic spring structure. Because the card often has to be inserted and removed during the course of practical use, the spring pressure must not be made excessive since, otherwise, the card cannot be removed without difficulty. However, if the spring pressure is too weak, the card can fall out very easily. This results in a contradiction for the design of the manual card reader.